>This thread really got me thinking: which music software companies >have gone out of business because of piracy so far? Hi, I don't know if any have gone to the wall, (Opcode certainly claimed it but I don't think it was their major problem) but it definitely affects the ability to enhance software or even deciding to develop certain products. TC give the stats that at one stage they had around 1,000 registered users for their Native Bundle Effects pack and 33,000 pirates. They measured the piracy rate by the number of individual user downloads for the the sites hosting the pirated versions so the figures may be overblown but they still show the problem faced by developers. They lost money on the development of that product and changed future product strategy as a result. There is also evidence that companies are not releasing high end plug-in products due to the anticipation of piracy. One of TC's stategies in developing the Powercore is that it gives a built in copy protection feature. Other vendors with products liek Protools have the same advantage. Vendors like Emagic and Steinberg have used hardware dongles as an alternative to supplying and maintaining DSP hardware which would double as a dongle. There are other examples available. The bottomline for me is not lost revenue itself, but its flow on effects: - reduced ability to continue improving the product - less products on the market - reduced product quality available to me Ray